Turbine continues to push Dungeons & Dragons Online deeper into the
Forgotten Realms setting, but manages to keep one foot firmly rooted back
in good ol' Eberron. Update 20, due out on November 12 adds two new free
dungeons - one in Forgotten Realms, one in Eberron - and revamps the Hall
of Heroes and the Reincarnation system, making it easier to partake in
both campaign settings.

A Study In Sable

Our first stop was in the Forgotten Realms, the setting for A Study In
Sable. This is a CR 26 dungeon that plays out like a dinner theatre murder
mystery, only with more violent swordplay on the part of the dinner
guests. Like the very best murder mysteries, this one takes place inside a
sprawling mansion populated by bizarre and suspicious houseguests.

It quickly becomes apparent that the real culprit here is a vampire, and
that several of the guests are his thralls. The player explores the
mansion interviewing guests, determining whether or not they are thralls
of the vampire lord, and the guests reveal clues - unlocking new areas,
indicating where secret doors may be found and other juicy tidbits. Some
of the guests can be saved from this hellish existence - one guest, for
example, can be saved by distracting him with a complex puzzle, with which
he becomes completely absorbed.

In the end, the player will encounter the genuinely scary vampire lord, Lord
Sable, in his crypt, surrounded by any guests that were not saved earlier.
The boss vampire needs to be weakened before he is susceptible to damage,
which requires letting sunlight into the dark room by smashing pillars
supporting the roof. Give him the gift of true death!

Brothers of the Forge

The second part of the tour focused on the Brothers of the Forge, a CR 28
dungeon in the Eberron setting, and the continuing trials and tribulations
of Talbron Tewn, the Warforged sorcerer. Talbron will be familiar to most
players who first encountered him in Korthos, and now he is seeking the
fate of his long-lost "brother," Gorrin. To find out what happened to his
fellow Warforged, you must travel to Cannith Training Facility No. 14, a
foundry where Warforged are trained in the arts of combat and where they
become living machines of death and destruction.

Obviously, the place is crawling with dangerous automatons, and the
player is tasked with locating and using training patterns to fight the
Warforged throughout the facility, and eventually with unraveling the
story of what happened to Gorrin back in the day. Apparently, the brothers
of this particular forge lived the Warforged version of Animal House.

According to the Turbine team, both of these dungeons are F2P - there has
been some confusion about that, but, according to Eric Boyer, "Both of
these dungeons are free, so VIP and Premium players can access these any
time for no purchase." When asked to clarify later, he repeated, "Both of
the quests are free."

Hall of Heroes

The Hall of Heroes, the final stop on the tour, is the central hub
between the Forgotten Realms and Eberron campaign settings. But we weren't
here to admire the statues - the major attraction here is the access to
the Reincarnation chamber. Reincarnation is a way to completely re-roll a
character from scratch, but with benefits based on the character's "past
life." A level 20 Fighter, for example, could undergo a True Reincarnation
to re-roll as a level 1 Wizard, with access to unique feats and additional
points for the character's build. This has been expanded to include Epic
characters over level 20, and now includes the Iconic characters
introduced with the Shadowfell Conspiracy expansion.

Speaking to the Life Shaper in the Reincarnation Chamber opens up new UI
which makes the whole Reincarnation process faster and easier. This
replaces the previous all-dialogue Reincarnation system, and was built in
response to player feedback.

Epic Reincarnation requires the character to be level 28, and the process
takes the character back to level 20 - not level 1 like the Heroic
Reincarnations - and Iconic Reincarnation will take the character from 28
back to level 15. These transformations, like all Reincarnations, require
and consume a Heart of Wood of the appropriate type, which is available
through gameplay as loot drops, or as a convenience item from the DDO
Store.

Characters reinvented by way of Epic Reincarnation will gain new feats
for their level 1 character, depending on the old character's Karma. For
example, a Fighter character reincarnating to something new will have
Karma in the Martial Epic Destiny, giving him access to one of the three
new Past Life feats from the Martial sphere for his new reincarnation. A
Cleric would have Karma in the Divine sphere, and would have a different
set of three options for the reincarnation.

Also making its way into the game is the Eldritch Knight enhancement tree
for Sorcerers and Wizards. This adds some melee capability to the squishy
caster classes, giving them some survivability during close-quarters
fights, or when the blue bar runs low. The Eldritch Knight enhancement
tree adds a number of melee attacks, combining physical weapon damage and
magical damage, and makes casters a lot tougher when the combat range
closes in.

There was a controversy surrounding the acquisition of Hearts of Wood,
which resulted in a large sit-in protest by the players. Turbine is aware
of how players feel about the situation, and when asked how they plan to
address it, Eric Boyer provided the answer.

"We had initially proposed removing the Heroic-level Heart of Wood from
the level 20 epic quest, and requiring you to run a series of quests
repeatedly in order to earn the item that you would then trade in. So
there were two things that we had to address for this: one, that players
have been accustomed to earning the True Heart of Wood over this last
year, and the difficulty level we had for achieving it, and the quests
themselves, so instead of putting that resistance to change out there and
forcing it on players, we decided to leave that because it really was a
pretty harmless change. We were just trying to consolidate how you would
earn the Hearts of Wood and keep it as one system, but we recognized that
it was a bit of an upset in the way people have been playing the game,
especially those that are repeatedly running the 1 - 20 game loop and
TR-ing multiple times on one character or a few times on several
characters. So we've left that alone, that was one thing. And the other
was to make a wider variety of quests available to play in order to earn
the combinations that would get you the Epic and Iconic Hearts of Wood. In
that beta period on Lamannia, we essentially redesigned the system based
on player feedback to meet the demands that they were asking."

In other words, Heroic Reincarnation will remain basically the same, but
Epic and Iconic Reincarnations will have more options for earning the
needed Hearts of Wood.